The Coward & The Guilt-Ridden
by Child of Loki
Summary: Meredith Brody has never been good at dealing with sorrow. It turns out that neither is Christopher LaSalle. Post-1x23


**Disclaimer: I don't own _NCIS: New Orleans_ or its characters...**

 **Author's Note: Haven't been writing much fan fiction lately, but you know I had to eventually way in on this one… Especially with the canon's treatment of the whole situation and complete lack of Brody/LaSalle Friendship, even though they'd been establishing a rapport for them throughout, only apparently not when it counted…**

 **WARNING: Emotional Angst; Minor Coarse Language; Spoilers for 1x21, 1x22 & 1x23...**

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"LaSalle."

The man continued to walk determinedly away from her, blatantly ignoring his fellow agent as she called after him. And it pissed her off. She was sick of handling him with kid gloves. And after today's incident -a rather clinical, polite term for the absolute shit-fest -no more. No more.

"Chris!"

Meredith Brody had officially lost her temper. Initially, after the tragedy, she hadn't known how to deal with the heartbroken agent, a man who had become one of her closest friends in the past years. Okay, so it wasn't like they were bosom pals, but she hadn't been more than mere acquaintances or coworkers with anyone for years. And the New Orleans NCIS team was like a little family. That much she'd learned well over the past year. But seeing a partner, a friend, a man so jovial in nature and emotionally effusive take hit after hit to his compassionate soul... She'd shut down, backed off, left Pride to care for his old friend, for his surrogate son.

She knew many would call her cold-hearted, an unfeeling bitch for not trying to be there for her partner, her _friend_ when he was hurting. But the truth of the matter was that Merri Brody had the softest, most fragile heart imaginable. She'd hated it all her life, that if she didn't completely withdraw, didn't throw up barriers thicker and more enduring than the great wall of China, her heart would break over every sorrow she witnessed. It had been selfish of her. God, forgive her, _selfish_. But she couldn't stand to watch Chris LaSalle suffer, couldn't allow herself to witness his untempered pain, because she didn't know what would happen to her.

Okay, she knew.

She'd want to crawl into a dark place, curl up and cry her soul out. She wouldn't make his pain less, wouldn't be able to help him heal. Like an inexperienced, untrained swimmer trying to rescue a man flailing in the ocean, she would only be dragged down into the cold abyss, where they both would drown, alone in the dark. Everyone thought she was tough, because of her stolid exterior, but it was only a carefully crafted facade, a front of reserve that protected her vulnerable, damaged, stupidly fragile heart. The most she had managed was the offering of her sister's necklace to hold, to keep safe the keepsake that Savannah had left Chris. And the only way she'd persevered through the encounter was a combination of his own stoic demeanor and the fact that she'd concentrated on the memory of her sister, a loss she'd spent years coming to terms with, rather than the fresh heartache of her partner's dead girlfriend.

Yet, she'd never been able to bring herself to directly talk about Savannah's death in the month or so since it'd happened, especially not with Chris himself. That sort of soul-consuming sorrow, she just could not face.

Meredith Brody was a coward.

But finally, anger had done for her what sorrow could not. She'd face her friend's anguish, no matter how heart-wrenching, she'd drag it out of him, because apparently it needed to be debrided like a necrotic wound. Before he died.

He was legging it pretty fast for the men's room. Like a sense of propriety ingrained by Mid-western manners and societal decency would stop her. AS he hit the threshold, she grabbed his bicep, perhaps more forcefully than she'd intended, or maybe subconsciously she knew how much force would be required to truly get the disturbed man's attention.

LaSalle tried to shrug her off, continue on his way, but _fuck. that. shit_. She gripped the sleeve of his shirt harder, plied her weight against him, expecting him to pull against it, but instead he used it against her, something an aikido proficient should've anticipated. However, it took her by surprise, probably because her tactfully suppressed emotions had already broken free, and her capacity for rational thought was already being overwhelmed, which caused her to falter, to stumble along where his strong arms guided her... spinning her about to land with her back roughly hitting the wall. And then he was up in her face like she were a suspect.

"Ya got a problem wi' me, _Agent Brody_?"

The anger in his voice and eyes didn't bother her. He'd been like a hot-headed teenage boy flooded with adrenaline and rage he couldn't quite control for the past seven weeks. It was the indifference beneath it, the way he addressed her as 'Agent Brody' with a sarcastic, hurtful tone. He used to possess such a cheerful, playful soul. Her heart was already beginning to ache. Ten seconds of exposure and she was already succumbing to the despair of seeing someone she cared about suffering.

Instead, she focused on her own anger. Yeah. Savannah was dead. It was unfair. It was terrible. But damn the man, it was no fucking reason to become someone the woman would've despised. Worse, to throw himself down such a destructive path.

"Yeah, I do, LaSalle." She shoved him back, off from her and then grabbed fistfuls of his shirt front to make sure he didn't try to run away again. His nostrils flared as he glared into her with eyes that used to be so ridiculously cheerful she would've resented him his carefree life if it hadn't been so damned infectious. But no more. Now he was all unadulterated rage. And at what? The world? Himself? Savannah for dying?

She'd felt all those things before, could understand where he was coming from, but it was no excuse for his recent reckless behavior. Feeling a wave of rage herself, Merri spun her fucked-up partner about, slamming him into the wall where he'd previously maliciously pinned her.

"Are you trying to get yourself killed?" She more yelled than asked.

Today... today had been bad. Not because finding themselves in a middle of a firefight was an irregularity. It always got the blood pumping, that was for sure. But they were trained agents. They knew how to respond, to keep their cool, and their heads, and minimize the risk to themselves and innocent civilians. Except, Chris LaSalle apparently no longer possessed a cool head. Instead of finding cover from which to return fire, he'd marched straight towards the biker gang that had opened fire on them, emptying his P228's magazine without flinching, all terminator-invincible style. But he wasn't a machine, goddamnit, even if he felt like one inside, devoid of human emotion. He was a human being, and he could be injured, killed.

Not only that, such cavalier behavior could get his fellow agents, Brody and Pride, Percy now, too, not to mention any number of innocent bystanders, shot and dead. But honestly, it wasn't for her own well-being, or that of her friends and civilians, that she'd found herself filled with unbearable fury. It was for him, because she couldn't stand to see him like this, reckless, borderline suicidal, having just relinquished everything he was, succumbing to defeat.

She saw it in his eyes. He didn't even put up a fight to her challenge, made no comment about her accusation as to his mental state. It was heartbreaking in a way Savannah's loss alone could never be. Because, yes it was sad that a young woman had her future stolen from her, but it was worse that the man she loved, who was still living, had given up on his own. It was entirely unacceptable.

"Savannah wouldn't want this," Merri said, her voice quiet but she held his gaze fiercely, refusing to let him push her away.

"How would _you_ know?"

God, the look of loathing in his eyes... _Hold it together, Merri. Hold it together._

Outwardly, LaSalle's anger was being unleashed in all directions, but she could see now where it really stemmed from, its true target. How could she contest with such self-hatred? How could she ever hope to get through to him, when his family, his brother, his best friend and mentor could not? That was another reason why she'd finally sucked it up, got mad and confronted the man. Because even Dwayne Pride couldn't get through to his surrogate son.

"Maybe I didn't know her all that well, but it was plain to see what kind of woman Savannah was. She would never want you to give in to despair because of her. She would want you to keep fighting, to be brave, to live." The anger in his eyes was twisting into another emotion, just as devastating to Merri's fragile heart. Anguish. "She loved you."

"Did she?"

 _Ouch_. Merri swallowed hard. The lump in her throat felt like an immovable, jagged rock.

"It was obvious in the way she looked at you."

He nodded his head, looked away from her, tears streaming down his cheeks. Finally, no longer concerned he'd run away, since she'd not only made him face his grief but stabbed him in the heart with it, Merri released the fistfuls of shirt she'd twisted up so tightly in her fingers that her knuckles had turned white. He turned away from her, took a few steps, and she was about to go to him, half-expecting to collapse to the floor, but his sob turned into a cry of rage and he quickly rounded on one of the metal bathroom stall doors, punching it so hard that he'd certainly fractured some carpals, and definitely left a significant dent.

Merri grabbed his hand, examined it briefly. No blood, but she'd have to take him to the hospital for x-rays. But it would have to wait, for she felt him grow weak against her grip, falling to the floor, his arm tugging against the hold she had on his wrist as she tried to ease him down without dislocating his shoulder.

He looked up at her, his eyes as large and pleading as a starving waif on the streets of Victorian London in frigid winter.

"Do ya think she... Did she..."

The waters were getting deep now, but she couldn't leave him to drown. Merri dropped to her knees beside her broken friend, looked straight into his doleful deep blue eyes.

"She knew you loved her, Chris. She knew."

Somehow, the words seemed to stab him, for he winced as if he'd been slapped.

"But I didn'..." he said.

 _What?_

"I wasn' sure, Brody. I-"

 _oh._

"Everyone has doubts." She rubbed his back in soothing circles, realizing it was more than just guilt he harbored for not being there when it happened, for not preventing Savannah's death. "Even when they're happy, especially when they're happy. It's too good to seem true, and we naturally worry."

"No." He paused and when he spoke again, he had marshaled some of the strain of despair in his voice. "I'd begun ta think that what I was doin' wasn' right. I wasn' myself when I was with Savannah. It was just too thrillin' to be with the prettiest girl in school to admit that I was livin' off an ego-high. I couldn' admit I wasn' myself when I was with her. I was jus' that fifteen year old boy with a crush whose fantasy had come true. I'm not sure I loved her as much as I loved _the idea_ of bein' wii her... If that makes any sense."

And there was the source of the guilt that hadn't permitted LaSalle to properly grieve. He didn't feel he deserved it. He felt like he'd been lying to the woman, and apparently to himself, about his feelings. That made the whole situation so much more cruel.

Gently placing a hand on his tear-stained cheek, she made the younger man look at her, wanted him to hear what she had to say. Maybe she could convince him to actually mourn Savannah's loss. Grief was a selfish thing, a healing one, but something a person could not do if they were filled with guilt and self-hatred. If LaSalle didn't grieve, didn't heal, didn't stop hating himself... She didn't want to lose one of the few good friends she'd had in her life.

"Relationships take time, Chris. They change and grow. Sometimes they don't work out. Sometimes they do. You and Savannah, you just didn't get the time to see it through, to figure it out. It's not your fault that maybe it wouldn't have lasted in the end. And that doesn't mean that you didn't care about her, that you weren't happy with her, that you didn't make her happy. You have the right to miss her, to mourn her, even if you're not sure that you loved her in the way you thought you should."

She felt his hands snake around her and she likewise pulled him closer, hugged him tight to her as he buried his face in her shoulder, wetting the fabric of her shirt with his tears. And with that, Meredith Brody relented, accepted the painful wound to her fragile heart and let her own sorrow for her friend's agony spill in her tears upon his shoulder.

The coward trying to comfort the guilt-ridden.

What a pair...

END

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 **A/N: Sorry, but I was not sold on the whole 'Savannah is the love of LaSalle's life' plot. I don't think they did a very good job with it, suddenly springing this serious relationship on the audience just so they could kill her off with more impact, which didn't work. (I also have an aversion to 'childhood crush' romance plots… unless there was an actual friendship back in the day, which they clearly state he didn't even think she knew he existed). Fail. Also, hate that they had Brody behave so indifferently. The thing with her sister's necklace was good, but really, otherwise she wouldn't even look extremely concerned about her fellow agent, and supposed friend? If you're going to do more personal and emotional things with your characters and claim they're a 'family' then you need to follow through on it. I'm hoping all of that content was just lost in editing it down for length and being unable to lose the plot exposition, and that the writers aren't really so horrible at characterization.**


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